Tag Archives: Antonija Cavcic

Our second presentation from the Inkers and Thinkers Symposium comes from Murdoch University’s Antonija Cavcic. Antonija could not attend the event in person as she was away in Japan on research but we were able to arrange for this YouTube presentation and then a Skype call afterwards.

In the wake of the Pussy Riot trial, it is fair to assume that anti-establishment sentiment has lingered even after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Such phenomena as the seminal samizdat works produced under KGB scrutiny, the current IT-enabled dissemination of explicit content in Russian original, parodic, and scanlated manga (based on the Japanese tradition of self-published homoerotic manga known as yaoi), and the plethora of networks where Russian fans can share files and content ordinarily filtered out by Russian ISPs, indicate a relentless desire to produce and proliferate content unfit for Orthodox ideological frameworks in Russia. By examining several web-enabled avenues of expression, file-sharing, and interaction amongst avid Russian manga artists, this paper will attempt to demonstrate the extent to which these practices have evaded Russian censors, and thus illustrate how the ideological hammer enmeshed in identity politics inevitably became entangled in the World Wide Web.

Biography

Currently a PhD candidate at Murdoch University, her research interests include the parallels between women’s progressive publishing practices in Victorian Britain and contemporary Japan, food media and celebrity chef culture, and gender and sexuality in Japanese culture.